If I Dream, I'm Sure to Wake
by Baka Neo 4
Summary: Vicious has survived his long and hard nightmare. However, Spike is alive as well, and Julia is rumored to be too. The dream isn't over...
1. Session 27: Enter the Snake

{o_O;; Me does not own Cowboy Bebop. ;_; I wish.}  
  
~*~  
  
'And I know by your smile...  
It's you...'  
  
-That voice...-  
  
"He's fading! Hurry up!"  
  
-...Julia.-  
  
~~Bzzt.~~  
  
-You used to be able to tell me by my smile...  
  
Not anymore.  
  
I can't smile anymore...-  
  
"Come on!"  
  
~~Bzzzt.~~  
  
-...-  
  
Vicious's tired eyes fluttered slowly open, as if the electricity did naught but awaken the simple muscles in his eyelids. He looked at his surroundings with dark eyes: a simple hospital room, adorned in blinding white. His teeth were subconciously gritted to the point of loosening in their roots. Vicious then moved his eyes to himself. He was still wearing his ebon outfit; his eyes quickly retracted, as looking too far down caused him yet another pain. His clothes were stained with dried blood, giving the coat a moist look. The hospital bed as well was interuppted in its white patterns due to the dried crimson soaking it.  
  
"He's alive." A wave of relief seemed to wash over the hospital workers as they each let out a long breath. Some were smiling. Vicious, however, wasn't pleased. Not at all.  
  
-...I can't wake up from this dream...  
  
Trapped...-  
  
His hand twitched convulsively before moving up to cover his face. It suddenly jerked up as a doctor began prodding his wound.  
  
"...Julia..." he murmured through grinding jaws.  
  
"Julia?" asked the doctor. "Ah, yes, Julia. Do you wish to see her?"  
  
"...She's alive...?"  
  
"And well. She'll be leaving in about an hour."  
  
"...Has a man named Spike Spiegal been in this hospital...?"  
  
"Yes. He's suffered from a deep abdominal wound. His stomach was cut quite severly, causing some of the acid to pierce some of his vital organs..." yammered he.  
  
"Shut up." cutted Vicious. "Is he alive?"  
  
"Eh...?" The doctor looked down. "Yeah, by a thread. A very thin one as well. He's lucky he isn't a smoldering ruin, as a matter of fact!"  
  
Vicious stared at the ceiling. He was alive...and so was she. If it weren't for the fact that Vicious had hardened over the years, he would've been complaining. Of course. He could never end this nightmare that was his life... The era of the Red Dragon was long over. He had nowhere to return to. And no doubt that Spike and Julia would live happily ever after...unless, of course, Spike still wanted a piece of him...  
  
Where to go now?...  
  
=^o_o^=  
  
"Man, look at that...it's like a slice taken out of a chunk of meat..."  
  
"Quit staring and get to work!"  
  
"Alright, alright..."  
  
Spike lay face-up on the hospital bed, seemingly unconcious. There was indeed a "slice" in his lower torso that simply shadowed down; it was as if staring into a vast, liquidated canyon seethed in capillaries...He was, however, ALIVE. He was breathing heavily and with difficulty, his teeth grinding versus each other in an attempt not to scream. Suddenly, his hands wringed out into the air in a violent motion.  
  
"VICIOUS!" screamed the now-concious bounty hunter, alarming all in the room. The nurses gasped in astonishment.  
  
"He's delusional; we have to treat him, and we have to treat him NOW..."  
  
-Julia...where are you...?-  
  
=^o_o^=  
  
Vicious walked with a slight, depressing limp in his step out of the hospital. Physical pain no longer bothered him; however, many things were nagging at his mind. The building was blown up. They were at the top floor.  
  
All three survived.  
  
Even Julia, who had supposedly died before...him...and himself. Only police cars came, right? The only way he could've been there was if someone had called an ambulance...  
  
Vicious laughed: an empty, hollow laugh; his head was thrown back in sadistic amusement. The only reason someone would even consider calling an ambulance is someone who cared for Spike Spiegal. But Julia couldn't call an ambulance...the doctor had said she would be leaving in about an hour. What about that girl? The dark-haired one with the emerald eyes that he had kidnapped once at the opera. She had called him for help...  
  
It was a possibility, anyway. Just a wild guess.  
  
Vicious continued walking along the path to nowhere, his hands in his pockets. Nowhere to return to...  
  
He thought for a moment.   
  
-...Julia...-  
  
He knew where he was going.  
  
He would go to Gren's.  
  
He wanted his music box.  
  
~*~  
  
{o.o} 


	2. Session 28: Doubt of Truth

{Thanks for the reviews all. ^-^ I have some sort of kooky sympathy for Vicious. Sue me. ^^;}  
  
~*~  
  
Vicious arrived at Gren's house. It was rather late; the sky was lit up with scattered stars, and the moon, full and round, only illuminated his paled features as he raised his bony fist to knock on the door. He hesitated only an inch from the door, remembering something uneasily. Yes, he had killed Gren. And Spike Spiegal was there, too. And, with an uneasy twitch, he recalled what he had told his former "comrade".  
  
-There is nothing left in this world to believe in.-  
  
He blinked once or twice as if in a state of deep thought, but really, that phrase seemed to repeat itself over and over again inside his head. Nothing left. Whether he was there for a minute, two, or perhaps three, it seemed like an eternity to the man. The moon shifted. As his eyes reflected the pale moonlight creating a strange, duo shine effect on the steel door, he realized that he must've been there for at least fifteen minutes. He lowered his hand and opened the door.  
  
Vicious glanced around the empty house. It was warm and had the smell of something that had not been used for a long time. He seemed to notice everything these days--a blade of grass out of place, a rat scurrying across the street. His senses seemed to become more acute. Maybe it was paranoia. Then again, Vicious, the leader of the late Red Dragon syndicate, was never paranoid.  
  
Then again. . .  
  
Mentally shaking himself for standing too still like an idiot, he took a few steps forward, still glacing around to see if the music box was in plain view. Instantly, he spotted the trinket standing in solitude upon the ironwood edge of the piano. In three long strides, he had crossed the room and picked up the box. He stared at it in silent contemplation, then placed it in his pocket. In the same three strides, he exited the room and was outside of the room, cold and alone in the dead streets of Blue Saturn.  
  
Ok, now he seriously had nowhere to go.  
  
=^x_x^=  
  
Spike Spiegal was finally treated. Feeling somewhat rejuvenated, he walked out of the hospital, hands in pockets and a dead look on his face. Not really DEAD, just. . .well. . .certainly not jovial, anyway. He allowed a car to pass before crossing the damp streets of Mars. How did he end up in the hospital? With a last fading memory, before he fell to the ground, he recalled police cars and the ISSP. Maybe someone called a medical center, Maybe it was Julia.  
  
Heck, it was better then someone calling for Vicious, anyway.  
  
But still, there was the most miniscule possibility that someone had called for Vicious. Then again, Spike new more people. He smirked halfheartedly. Normally, Spike didn't care about popularity. He had vowed never to care about what others thought, never to shed a tear again. It wasn't really a VOW, more of a cessation to feel. Yet he couldn't help but feel the slightest bit of smug with the knowledge that he was more popular then his so-called "friend".  
  
Even with his newfound feeling of. . .whatever it was. . .there was hardly a skip in his step. He mentally cursed himself out for not asking about Julia.  
  
He recalled blood running through his hands, he recalled her laying in his blood-soaked arms. When he had met her at the graveyard a while back, it was as if the missing piece of him had returned. He had seen a slice, a bare glimpse of paradise as they embraced on that rainy day. He remembered his first smile in a long time fighting its way to his lips.  
  
Spike Spiegal never once denied Vicious's betrayal. Not once. But was it really Vicious's betrayal that bothered him, deep inside. . .?  
  
Or was it his own?  
  
=^x_x^=  
  
"There is a call trying to recieve us from Mars, Jet-person~!" bellowed Radical Edward, her arms wiggling strangely as her hacket glasses reflected static.  
  
Radical Edward was back on the Bebop along with the Welsh Corgy, Ein. She had taken off to search for her father on Earth a while ago, but returned. Turned out that Ed's father was arrested for "disturbing the peace," or something similar. She wasn't affected too much, at least on the outside. So she returned to the Bebop, forcing it onto Earth with a control. Her strange, lopsided grin still remained.  
  
Jet poked his head out from the kitchen, where a pleasant smell wafted into the main quarters, alluring to all who noticed and gesturing to pasengers in a come-hither motion. His mouth was shaped into a confused, tiny "o" and one brow -- specifically, the eye with the scar tracing it. He shook his ladle in Ed's direction.  
  
"I'm busy, Ed. Tell 'em to call back later." His apron, reading "Kiss the Cook," smelled like food. Ed sniffed for a second before her eyes returned to the screen.  
  
"Codename. . .Swimming Bird." said Ed in a mock-mysterious voice. Jet's eyes widened. He put the ladle down and walked to Ed, crouching down to her sitting position.   
  
"Accept the call, Ed."  
  
The fuzzy image of Swimming Bird appeared on the screen, exactly how the Bebop crew remembered it: the same fuzzy, untidy hair, the same mysterious mismatched eyes, the same cool face. Jet smiled, albeit a grin was fighting tooth and nail to reach his face.   
  
"Hey Jet." replied Spike nonchalantly, as if nothing had happened and Spike was simply . . .away.  
  
"Spike!" Jet exclaimed, his throaty voice jovial and relieved. "Great to see you again."  
  
"Yeah, just peachy." replied the fellow crew member. "Pick me up, will ya?"  
  
"Yeah, sure." Jet nodded. Ed began to type vigorously, transmitting Spike's coordinates onto the thin laptop with floating, grinning faces.   
  
"Coordinates of Spike-person have been recieved, captain~!" Ed bellowed once more, grinning foolishly with Ein sitting in her lap.  
  
Faye watched from the yellow sofa, drinking from a bottle of orange juice. One eyebrow was raised, even as her lips were still curled around the mouth of the bottle. She squinted in vain as the picture of Spike Spiegal disappeared. Jet stood up after a moment's hesitation and headed back into the kitchen.  
  
"Hey Jet," Faye suddenly shouted, "what's for dinner?"  
  
"Bell peppers and beef."  
  
THEY SAY HUNGER IS THE BEST SPICE. . .  
  
~*~  
  
{W00t. XD Uhm, and again, thanks for the reviews. Warning for all of you, i'm not exactly a big fan of Spike/Faye....gomen. In the future, I might do an F/S, but this is not the future, so, uhm, gomen. ^^;} 


	3. Session 29: Dwell on the Past

{XD Aww...ty for the reviews! Ty for the tips too, Falstaff! ^_^ I'll work on those, hai! Ty-ty-ty. O_o;; i'm a Jet/Faye. DON'T KILL ME! *sob sob*  
  
I forgot the disclaimer last chapter.  
  
Disclaimerx2: I dun own Cowboy Bebop.  
I dun own Cowboy Bebop or anything else. ;.;   
  
The two lyrics at the very beginning of the first chapter are from "Adieu" for those who don't know. It's Julia's song. ^_^}  
  
~*~  
  
Jet swerved by the dully-glinting streets of Mars inside the Hammerhead, smirking from the sallow hue of the glass afront the cockpit. Wind blasted out from directly below the landing space of the enormous tanned ship, causing some people nearby to tumble into the sidewalk painfully. Spike, however, stood on his two feet, the only person unfazed by the sudden explosion that was the landing of Jet's ship. His hair only twirled slightly over his eyes, which were crinkled in the closest thing to a smile--not even a smirk was there. He was rather surprised at the lack of the people with "space feet," and was rather disappointed. It was as if the world had suddenly grown weaker in his absence. The hatch lowered to reveal a tanned metal board with lines engraved in a stripe motion, creative yellow sparks as it scraped the road. The sparks splashed into a nearby puddle.  
  
-It was raining that day as well. . .-  
  
Spike shuddered unconciously and walked towards the hatch, his trained feet making no sound against the pavement. His hands sat uneasily in his pockets as his feet made a "clop-clop" sound against the cold steel. The hatch shrunk back into place behind him with a metallic grinding sound as he walked slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. An unseen bandage was wrapped around his muscled, compact abdomen. He bore a long scar where they had attempted to fix his organs and sew him up. Jet turned around with a slight crackle in his piloting seat.  
  
"Hurry up, Spike. Don't want the hatch to rust, you know." said Jet in a bantering tone, as if poking his nerves. Spike hesitantly looked up to match Jet's brown eyes and smirked--a kind of hollow smirk that didn't quite meet his depressed eyes. Jet's mouth cupped into a miniscule "o" for a short moment, but quickly widened into a smirk. He did take note of this, however, and motioned towards a seat next to him.  
  
"What kind of a greeting is that?" replied Spike in the same tone, albeit not quite. His casual manner seemed to have dispersed ever so slightly. Jet grinned despite himself as Spike jumped into the seat in a smooth, flowing tilting motion with a single hand. Jet pulled on a lever the the Hammerhead sped off into the distance of the stars. After a moment of flying towards a tiny speck on the radar that Jet indicated was the Bebop, Spike asked casually, "I saw Ed, Ein, and Faye in the background when I called." Jet's grin shrunk into a sort of happy smirk.  
  
"Well, Ed's father and his cohort were arrested shortly after they apparently 'set off' to look for him. Disturbing the peace." Jet said, his hands piloting expertly as if he didn't even have to look where he was going. "Ed and Ein came back after a while. Ed didn't seem too depressed. . .she still has the hologram, though, and still looks at it a lot." Spike put a cigarette in his mouth and looked slightly to his left, not noticing it wasn't lit. He stared at the black oblivion with stars dotting every inch of the sky without a trace of interest. "Faye was here since you left. . .payed off some of her debt, there were less people to feed and more money to spare." Spike nodded absentmindedly, unaware of most that was going on. Images flashed by from Hyperspace, stars sped by in an almost blinding fashion. . .  
  
"We're here." Those two words snapped Spike out of his daze. He looked up with a "huh?" sound, as if to prove to Jet that he really was daydreaming. Jet smiled again, his face creased and lined from age. He placed his metal arm on the cockpit and pushed himself up with a clunk, walking towards the inside of the Bebop. Spike followed, still looking around as if this place was new.  
  
Jet clicked a few white buttons upon a keypad with his index finger and stood back as the door slid open with a "shwit" sound. The cold, dark hallway greeted them with the dripping of water echoing through the black. They stepped on the grated floor with lights flashing at the sides as if signaling for them to proceed and stared at the moving walls. The entrance to the main quarters appeared before them and they promptly entered.  
  
Same old, same old. The same dull black, almost bluish-black tinge to the walls and floor, a small yellow table down the short steps, surrounded by two orange sofas made of a leather material. A single light and fan hovered in the middle of the room, shining smugly upon the ones below it. Jet trotted down the steps, followed by Spike. Nothing much new, anyway. Spike's eyes crinkled again as he scrambled down the steps. Faye's slender legs stuck out of the side of the opposite sofa, apparently almost bare--she was probably in the same outfit. As he neared to sofa, he realized she wasn't at all.  
  
Her violet hair was combed back completely and shimmering as if it were styled with gel. Her outfit was certainly almost the same as it was before his leave of absence, except a darker shade of emerald green. Her jacket was the color of her hair: a beautiful purple hue. It was actually over her shoulders as well, tied at the front-bottom ends with a knot. She was drinking a bottle of orange juice and staring at the ceiling boredly. Spike's eyes crinkled, and a smirk tugged away at his lips. He bent over the sofa in a rather strange greeting.  
  
"Boo."   
  
"AARRGGHH!" Faye leapt up in panic, some orange juice splashing onto her lap as she did. Spike withheld a yelp and leaned backwards so Faye wouldn't hit him in the face. She rubbed her forehead irritably. Spike chuckled only slightly--and that, too, was hollow, yet Faye was less observant then the leader of the Bebop crew, and glared at the fluffy-haired menace. A smirk crept onto her pink, moist lips, and she began to chuckle too. Ein trotted silently to their sides, tongue hanging out curiously. He growled as Faye stood up, nearly crushing his poor stub of a tail, and trotted off in a huff. Ed spotted Ein trotting away from the couch and rolled over to Spike with a broad grin on her face.  
  
"Spike-person~! Are you back from the d-d-dead?! Is Spi-Spi a zombie~?!" Ed waggled her fingers in an attempt to act spooky, speaking in a low voice to add comical effect. Suddenly, she latched onto Spike's leg, wrapping nearly twice around due to her twig-like figure. "Ed missed you! But home you are, and dinner we shall have!" Spike stared at her in slight bewilderment and smirked.  
  
"Get off, you." he said coolly, shaking his leg slightly causing Ed to fall off. However, she recovered rapidly and crept into the kitchen, just in time to hear the scratchy voice of Jet announce the readiness of dinner. "Dinner, dinner, QING-JIAO-ROU-SI~!" sang Ed cheerfully, Ein trotting, nails clicking against the hard steel, close behind. Faye stood up nonchalantly, and, as if Spike hadn't even left, walked casually to the kitchen. Spike took one last glance around before heading in.  
  
---  
  
A figure clothed in black stood in the shadows of the blank streets, face nor features availible for show. A gust raised the flap of the jacket, creating a dramatic flowing event. Every motion seemed fluidly smooth: every step flowed into each other gracefully as the shadowy figure walked. Within the pale moonlight, the small glint of the reflection upon a small gun could be identified, however slightly. It was a peaceful, wet night: perhaps the perfect scenery for a strange event.  
  
Close to a small corner-shop at the side, a young man--no older then 14--dashed out of the glass door, something poking out of his jacket. He seemed to be running away from something, looking back over his shoulder every now and then. And then, the boy crossed the path of the figure unknowingly. The boy stumbled into the person and looked up.  
  
"Watch where you're--" He stopped rather abruptly at the strange glower of the figure's eyes. Blue eyes loomed down at the boy, creating the slight illusion of a flash of light. As if with no whites, all glow. It was...no less then eerie. The boy stepped backwards, then suddenly fell to the ground as a loud bang filled the silence. A strand of blonde hair slowly floated to the ground as, with small clip-clops, the figure trotted away...  
  
---  
  
"So, what's up?" asked Spike in one of his more cheerful voices, looking up as he picked up a bell pepper with a pair of chopsticks. Jet paused and looked up from his meal, as if somewhat -pained- to hear the voice. Of course, it was because he hadn't heard that voice in such a "short eternity". Jet smiled weakly, which then triggered a broad grin.  
  
"Not much. . ." Jet said. Spike continued to eat calmly, but there was some sort of doubt mixed in his mind. Something was being hidden from him, something they didn't want him to know.   
  
CHOMP, CHOMP, SPACE COWBOY  
  
~*~  
  
{XD Wow...what a lame ending!} 


End file.
